We’re back after a week off – had a lovely trip to Latvia, came home to plenty of Welsh rain!
Catching up on a couple of stories people were kind enough to send me (send me your FOI success stories, I love it!).
Firstly, Schools Week using FOI to see if people were leaving the Department for Education’s headquarters unusually late on the evening of a Covid lockdown party.
The FOI data showed showed staff swiped out of Sanctuary Buildings 34 times after 10pm on the night of the party (December 10), including eight exits after 1am. The next highest was nine swipes after 10pm on Thursday 9, and then five on Thursday 3. Four of the days had zero swipes in that time period.
The Cabinet Office, which held the data, had refused to supply it on grounds of national security – it argued the swipe card data could “enable a hostile actor to determine patterns of movement by staff in and out of the building”. The ICO said it was “difficult to see how this specific information could be of any benefit” (not least because, at the time, everyone was in lockdown and there was quite a bit of home working going on).
Secondly, The Oldham Times used FOI to get more details on money passed to the Duchy of Lancaster from unclaimed estates.
In most of the country, the assets of those who die without a will or next of kin are transferred to the Treasury, with the money spent on things like public services. However, in some areas the money is passed to the Duchy of Lancaster or the Duchy of Cornwall.
Details about estates passed to the Treasury are published. Those passed to the Royal family, not so much.
Oldham Council had argued the information shouldn’t be released as the information could be used by fraudsters or reveal empty homes that could be targeted by criminals. The ICO agreed on this point but decided the public interest was in releasing some of the information (essentially the same information as already published for other unclaimed estates).
Domestic abuse
As many as 187,750 babies are present at Police callouts for domestic abuse every year in England, according to new data.
Responses to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request returned by 15 police forces across England, which serve approximately a third of the country’s population, reveal of the average 1,444,225 domestic abuse incidents reported to police annually in England (ONS data from 2021 to 2023), 13 per cent have involved an infant being present. This translates to an estimated 187,750 babies (from birth to age 2) on average each year.
Election security
Security guards were drafted in at polling stations across Leeds during the 2024 General Election at a cost of more than £11,000, the Yorkshire Evening Post can exclusively reveal.
The sizeable sum, uncovered following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the YEP, paid for protection at 31 different locations during the election.
It included polling stations where security was deemed necessary as a result of “police intelligence” and concerns about possible “disruption”.
Low emission zones
A Freedom of Information request by Wessex Fleet, a fleet management company based in Wiltshire, found that on average across the UK, more than half (55 per cent) of revenue generated by Clean Air Zones (CAZs), LEZs and ULEZs comes from Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs).
In 2023, almost one billion pounds (£941 million) was raked in across the UK’s 15 LEZs. Oxford is the location that relies on offenders the most, with 69 per cent of its Low-Emissions Zone revenue coming from PCNs and roughly £64,000 raked in every month.
TikTok crime
Following on from Facebook crime, Instagram crime, and Snapchat crime (has anyone ever done Linked In crime?), reported crimes mentioning TikTok.
Dyfed-Powys Police has recorded a spike in “disturbing” crimes linked to social media site, TikTok as figures double in the last three years. Crimes including sexual communications with a child and stalking are among the top offences logged by the force in the last 12 months.
New figures obtained by Legal Expert via Freedom of Information requests to all police forces in England and Wales reveals more than 140,000 crimes have been linked to the app since 2021. In the Dyfed-Powys force area, police recorded 22 offences in 2021, followed by 42 the year after. This year so far, a further 42 TikTok-related crimes have been logged.
Cannabis farms
New data has revealed the extent of cannabis factories discovered by police across north Northamptonshire – with the largest number of grow houses found in the Kettering area.
A total of 108 cannabis factories have been discovered in Kettering from January 2020 to July 2024. Over the same period the next highest level of detection was in Wellingborough with 89 busts. East Northants police officers closed down 79 drug farms, with 38 found in Corby.
Over the same four-and-a-half years, 187 arrests have been made in connection with the cultivation of cannabis in Corby, Kettering, East Northants and Wellingborough.
Long housing waits
The average time for a homeless person to be assessed and find a residence has increased to nine months due to Scotland’s councils’ overstretched resources, according to new figures.
Freedom of information requests published by the Scottish Government reveal that it took an average of 270 days for councils to fulfil their duties and provide settled accommodation for someone who was either threatened with homelessness or who was classed as unintentionally homeless in 2022-23 – up from 240 days in 2018/19.
The average number of days has increased in 19 local authorities over the last five years, despite the number of people being assessed and housed barely increasing (20,505 in 2018/29 to 20,860 in 2022/23). The longest average wait last year was 699 days in Edinburgh, followed by 591 days in Stirling and 550 days in Midlothian.
Improved access
Network Rail has apologised after admitting that it failed to spend £65 million of funding allocated to improving access at rail stations. The admission came after Disability News Service (DNS) secured figures through a freedom of information request which showed spending on the Access for All scheme over the last eight years.
Network Rail – which owns, repairs and develops the railway infrastructure in England, Scotland and Wales – had originally delayed releasing the figures until after the general election, claiming this was due to “the complexity and volume of the information requested”.
But the figures show for the first time how spending on improving access at rail stations has fluctuated wildly over the last eight years, while £65 million allocated for improvements over the last five years has been left unspent.
Assaults on traffic wardens
Traffic wardens in Herefordshire have been subjected to an alarming number of assaults in the last year. The figures were revealed in a recently published freedom of information request to Herefordshire Council.
It was reported that there were 32 incidents involving traffic wardens, also known as civil enforcement officers, being assaulted by members of the public while carrying out council duties in Herefordshire.
It was disclosed that 11 of these assaults involved physical violence and 21 were verbal assaults. The council’s response said that the verbal assaults involved shouting or swearing, threats of physical assault and harm, and hate speech.
Fare dodgers
Transport for London (TfL) spent almost £22million cracking down on fare dodging across the Tube and bus network over the last year – but only collected £1.3million in penalty charges as a result of that enforcement.
Responding to a Freedom of Information request on the topic, TfL said that the harm caused by fare evaders “is much greater than simply the missed cost of a ticket” as the culprits can often be “intimidating or abusive to our colleagues and to our customers”.
Dog fouling
The absolute classic of local journalism – probably because it really annoys people and it never really gets solved.
The number of reported cases of dog fouling in the Telford and Wrekin Council area has increased by 36% in a year.
In 2023-24 there were 1,119 cases reported and cleared, an average of almost 100 a month, up from 823 in the previous financial year. Despite that, fewer than 20 fines have been issued since 2022 and none of them have been paid.
The statistics have been released as part of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the BBC, although the council refused to release exact figures for the number of fines, claiming it would somehow identify individuals involved.
Picture by Ilargian Faus on Pexels
